How to organise an Americano

By Alejandro Portillo GuerreroUpdated 11 October 20268 min read

An Americano is a social padel format where you sign up on your own, play every round with a different partner, and keep every point you win. After the last round the player with the most total points wins — not the most matches. Here is how to run one: courts, rounds, points per match, resting players and tiebreaks.

What an Americano is

An Americano is an individual competition played in pairs. You enter on your own, the schedule gives you a new partner each round, and every point your pair wins goes onto your personal total. Ideally everyone partners everyone once. The final ranking is by total points won, so a 13–11 defeat still earns you 11. Ranking by wins is the most common mistake people make when they describe the format.

A typical result after one round:

Variants you will hear about

• Team Americano: fixed pairs play a round robin and the pairs are ranked by points.
• Mixed Americano: every pair is one man and one woman, so each man partners each woman.
• Mexicano: round 1 is a draw, then partners and courts come from the live standings. See our Mexicano guide.

Step-by-step organiser checklist

1. Collect sign-ups. Most groups use a WhatsApp poll or a Playtomic event. Solo sign-up lets you balance the courts. If the night is level-restricted, state the range on the Playtomic 0–7 scale.
2. Book courts. One court per four players. Fewer courts is fine, but then some players rest each round (see the table below).
3. Choose the scoring. Points per match (24 is the usual default), fixed total or first to N, or timed rounds.
4. Decide the round count from your booking time: roughly 13 minutes per 24-point round.
5. Announce the rules before round 1. Points format, serves per turn, when to change ends, what resting players get, and the tiebreak order. Arguing about this at the end ruins the night.
6. Collect scores after every round and show the standings between rounds. Players want to see where they are.
7. Finish. The top points total wins. A prize or a final for the top four is optional.

Courts vs players

Each court takes four players. Courts in use per round = the lower of your courts and players ÷ 4 (rounded down), and everyone else rests. The fourth column shows the round counts that give everyone the same number of matches.

With 7 players on one court, three sit out every round. Book a second court if you can. When the player count is a multiple of four and every court is full, any round count is fair because nobody rests.

The easy way: use the free generator

Our free Americano generator does the maths in the table for you. Paste the names straight from the WhatsApp list, set the courts and points, and it builds the rounds: partners rotate to avoid repeats, and when someone has to rest it is the person who has rested least, avoiding back-to-back rests where possible. The round chooser highlights the counts where everyone plays the same number of matches, and you can still pick any number. Before round 1 it shows a rules card with the points format, serves per player, when to change ends, the tiebreak order and the bye rule. During the night you enter one score per court and the other fills itself in (13 for one pair means 11 for the other in a 24-point round). The leaderboard updates as you go, and you can print the schedule or share a read-only results link in the group. It is free, needs no sign-up and saves in your browser.

Points per match and match length

Fixed total or first to N?

This is where groups get confused, so say it out loud. In the fixed total format, “24 points” means 24 points are played: 13–11, 15–9, or a 12–12 draw, and both pairs keep their points. It is the most common format in organiser guides and makes match length predictable. In first to 24, the match ends when one pair reaches 24, so scores look like 24–19 and matches run longer. Timed rounds (10–15 minutes, score at the whistle counts) keep you inside the court booking. Our generator offers all three: a fixed total of 16, 21, 24, 28 or 32 (24 by default), first to N, or timed rounds.

Serving and changing ends

A common convention in fixed-total rounds: each player serves total ÷ 8 points in a row, in the order A1, B1, A2, B2, so everyone serves twice. That is 3 serves each at 24 and 4 at 32, and you change ends at half-total (12 or 16). Clubs differ: the University of Jaén rules serve 4 at a time in a 33-point match and change ends at 17, and many groups simply rotate the serve every 4 points.

How long an Americano takes

Plan roughly 10 minutes per 24-point round plus about 3 minutes to change courts and enter scores. Eight players on two courts playing 7 rounds is about 90 minutes, so a two-hour booking fits with some slack. Most nights run 1.5–2 hours. Organisers often underestimate this, so add 30 minutes, or cut rounds rather than leave the last ones unplayed with some people having rested more than others.

Odd numbers and resting fairly

Fair resting matters more to players than never repeating a partner. Rotate the rest so nobody rests a second time before everyone has rested once, and avoid back-to-back rests. If your round count gives unequal matches, decide what resting players get:

• Zero: simple, but it punishes whoever rested most.
• The round average: half the total, so 12 bye points in a 24-point round. This is the default in our generator, and the bye points are labelled as such on the leaderboard.
• Rank by average: order the leaderboard by average points per match played instead of total points.

The cleanest fix is to choose an equal-matches round count from the table, so no compensation is needed.

Tiebreakers

Sources genuinely disagree here, so pick one and announce it before round 1. Orders in use include:

• matches won, then point difference;
• head-to-head, then point difference, then matches won;
• matches won, then the best single match, then head-to-head;
• a short shootout or one golden point on court.

One catch: in fixed-total rounds, two players with the same points and the same number of matches always have the same point difference, so it decides nothing. That is why our generator puts it last: ties on points go to matches won, then head-to-head, then point difference.

Common mistakes

• Ranking by wins instead of total points.
• Saying “24 points” without saying whether it is a fixed total or first to 24.
• Deciding the tiebreak or the resting rule after the last round.
• Picking a round count where some players get more matches than others.
• Pen-and-paper rotations with repeated partners or someone resting twice in a row.
• No standings between rounds.
• Booking too little court time.

Rounds in an Americano are points only. For full matches with games, sets and deuce, see how padel scoring works and the padel rules.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• padelcompass — Americano padel rules
• Host a Tourney — Americano padel rules and schedule
• americano-padel.app — Cómo organizar un torneo americano de pádel
• Racketrise — Padel Americano format
• padelmake — Classic Americano
• Universidad de Jaén — Pádel individual “Americano” rules
• PadelMix — Americano padel guide

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